Fated to a human

Chapter 8: An Unwanted Friendship

Aurora hadn't expected to make friends this quickly. She'd braced herself, back in Sedona, for a semester of eating lunch alone and studying in empty corners of the library, the usual quiet loneliness of starting somewhere new. So when a poised, effortlessly warm upperclassman named Brielle sat down across from her in the student union three days after the scaffolding collapse and struck up a conversation like they'd known each other for years, Aurora hadn't questioned her luck. She'd simply been grateful.

"You're the girl from the accident," Brielle said, not unkindly, sliding into the seat with a coffee in each hand — one of which she pushed across the table toward Aurora without being asked. "I heard about it. That's terrifying. Are you doing okay?"

"I'm fine. Little shaken, but fine." Aurora accepted the coffee, surprised by the gesture. "Sorry, have we met?"

"Brielle." She extended a hand, smile easy and warm. "I help coordinate a few things around campus orientation stuff, mostly. I like to check in on first-years, especially ones who've had a rough week. Small town girl, right? I could tell the second I saw you standing outside the library with that lost-but-trying-not-to-show-it look. I had the exact same look my first semester here."

Aurora laughed, the sound coming easier than it had in days. "That obvious?"

"Only to someone who's been there." Brielle leaned forward, conspiratorial, kind. "Where are you from?"

"Sedona. Arizona."

"I've heard it's beautiful."

"It is." Aurora wrapped both hands around the coffee cup, something in her chest loosening at the easy, uncomplicated warmth of the conversation, the first uncomplicated thing that had happened to her since she'd arrived in Greenwich. "I miss it more than I expected to. My mom's still there. It's just the two of us."

"That must be hard." Brielle's voice softened in exactly the right places, and if there was calculation behind the sympathy, Aurora had no reason yet to look for it. "Well. You've got a friend here now, if you want one. I know this city can feel strange when you're not from it."

Aurora didn't know, then, how carefully that last sentence had been chosen. She only knew it was the kindest thing anyone in Greenwich had said to her since she'd arrived, and she held onto it the way you hold onto anything warm when you've been cold for longer than you realized.

---

They fell into an easy rhythm over the following two weeks — coffee between classes, a study session in the library that turned into two hours of conversation about nothing in particular, an invitation to a pack-adjacent social event that Brielle framed as a "campus mixer" and Aurora attended without any idea of what she was actually walking into. Brielle asked questions the way good friends did: casually, generously, always circling back to make sure Aurora felt heard rather than interrogated.

*What's your class schedule look like this semester? Do you usually walk back to your dorm alone at night, or does someone go with you? Have you talked to anyone else outside of classes — professors, other students, anyone from off campus?*

Aurora answered all of it freely, grateful for someone who seemed to actually want to know. She didn't notice how precisely the questions mapped onto a life she'd need to be isolated from in order to be vulnerable. She didn't notice, either, the one subject Brielle circled without ever asking directly: Kaiden. Brielle never brought him up by name, never pushed, simply let silences sit in exactly the right places whenever Aurora mentioned him herself which she did, more than she meant to, in the careful, unconscious way people talk about someone they haven't admitted yet they're thinking about.

Brielle noted every mention. Filed every detail. And smiled, warmly, sympathetically, the entire time.

---

"You're spending time with Brielle."

Kaiden's voice was carefully neutral when he said it, but Desmond, standing across from him in the training hall, caught the edge underneath it immediately.

"The human girl? I've heard."

"Watch her." Kaiden didn't specify which her, and Desmond didn't ask. "Brielle. Closely. I don't trust the timing of this friendship, and I don't trust Brielle's motives for much of anything these days."

"You think she's dangerous?"

"I think she's ambitious." Kaiden's jaw tightened. "And I think ambitious people don't befriend a stranger out of nowhere unless there's something in it for them. Aurora doesn't know Brielle's history. She doesn't know what Brielle wants, or what she's capable of doing to get it. I want eyes on this before it becomes a problem I can't undo."

Desmond studied him for a long moment. "You could just tell the girl the truth. All of it. The pack, the bond, Brielle. Let her make an informed choice about who she trusts."

"I know." Kaiden exhaled, something tired and frustrated in the sound. "I will. Soon. But she's already had a scaffolding collapse nearly kill her this month. I'm not going to add 'your new friend might be plotting against you and also I'm a werewolf' to that same week if I can help it. She needs time."

"Time is exactly what Brielle's counting on you not having." Desmond's voice was quiet, but firm. "Watch the deadline, Kaiden. The council isn't going to forget it just because you're distracted."

Kaiden didn't answer that, because there wasn't an answer that made either problem smaller. He simply nodded, once, and told Desmond to keep him informed the moment anything about Brielle's behavior shifted from suspicious to actionable.

Neither of them yet knew how little time that would take.

---

That evening, Brielle sat across from Aurora in her dorm room, ostensibly helping her study for a psychology midterm, papers and highlighters spread across the small desk between them. Aurora excused herself to the shared bathroom down the hall, coffee mug in hand, laughing at something Brielle had said moments before — easy, unguarded, entirely at ease.

The moment the door clicked shut behind her, Brielle's smile dropped away like something taken off and folded neatly aside.

She moved quickly, efficiently, years of practiced discretion guiding her hands as she reached into her bag and withdrew a small, matte black disc no larger than a coin — a tracker, the kind pack scouts used for monitoring territory disputes, adapted here for a far more personal purpose. She slid it into the inner lining of Aurora's backpack, tucked beneath a notebook where it would never be noticed, and zipped the pocket closed with the same careful precision she brought to everything else in her life.

By the time Aurora returned, mug refilled, still smiling, Brielle's expression had rearranged itself back into warmth so seamlessly that nothing in her face betrayed what she'd just done.

"Where were we?" Brielle asked, pulling the psychology notes back toward herself.

Aurora sat down across from her, entirely unaware that from this moment forward, she would never again move through Greenwich without someone watching exactly where she went.